Nobody can message you unless you let them in.
No phone number. No email. No username. Strangers are not blocked and not filtered here. They have no door.
Coming soon to Android and iPhone
Create your account
The four things every other messenger asks for before it will carry a word.
None of these are asked for. KnownSquare has no phone number, email address, username or contacts permission.
We never asked.
Every other messenger promises to protect your number. We do something simpler and stronger: we never collect one. An account here is a key created on your phone, and nothing else.
No contacts permission, so we cannot read your address book. No SMS permission, so we cannot read your messages.
The app does ask for a name and a photograph, once, so the people you accept know who they are talking to. Neither ever reaches us.
Ask us for everything we hold about you and the honest answer is a random string, a public key, and the fact that it exchanges sealed messages with some other random strings.
Every messenger you use starts by identifying you.
- Needs a phone number
- Yes
- A stranger can reach you
- If they have your number
- Added to a group without agreeing
- Yes, unless you change a setting
Signal
- Needs a phone number
- Yes
- A stranger can reach you
- If they have your number
- Added to a group without agreeing
- Yes, unless you change a setting
Telegram
- Needs a phone number
- Yes
- A stranger can reach you
- If they have your number or username
- Added to a group without agreeing
- Yes, unless you change a setting
KnownSquare
- Needs a phone number
- No
- A stranger can reach you
- No path exists
- Added to a group without agreeing
- Never
| App | Needs a phone number | A stranger can reach you | Added to a group without agreeing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Yes | If they have your number | Yes, unless you change a setting | |
| Signal | Yes | If they have your number | Yes, unless you change a setting |
| Telegram | Yes | If they have your number or username | Yes, unless you change a setting |
| KnownSquare | No | No path exists | Never |
As of August 2026. The others have settings that narrow some of this. The table is what happens to somebody who changes nothing.
You meet, and then you connect.
Two ways in, and both need a human being.
Nothing above the line arrived from someone who was not let in. There is no path for it to take.
Show this to the person in front of you. Their phone scans it, both of you accept, and the line between you exists.
In person. Physical presence is the ceremony. It cannot be botted, bought or farmed.
Introduced. Someone you both trust hands over the real keys, over lines that are already encrypted.
There is no screen for this. A person you have not accepted cannot address you, so nothing arrives to approve, ignore or read.
Everyone else. Not a blocked message. Not a spam folder. No delivery at all.
Sarah vouched for Nik.
She has met him in person. Ask him something only he would know before you accept.
The people you trust are the directory.
No lookup by name or number. To reach somebody far away, a mutual contact introduces you.
Nobody adds you to anything.
You have been put into a group you never asked to join, where everyone could see your number. That does not happen here.
Sarah invites you to "Street party"
14 members. Joining lets you post here. Nobody in it can message you privately.
Every connection has its own switch.
Accepting someone does not put you on a list. It creates a single private line between the two of you, and that line answers to you alone.
Pause
Held quietly at our relay. Nothing is delivered and nothing is lost.
Block
The line stops carrying anything at all, in both directions.
Delete
The line is gone. Reaching you again means meeting you again.
Everything your family already does, in one place.
The chat is where plans are made. Here it is where they get done.
Decide together
Ask the question, let everyone answer, and turn the winning answer straight into the plan.
Count who is coming
Invite the family, see the numbers, and quietly chase the people who have not replied.
The shared list
Anyone adds, anyone ticks. The one thing every household still keeps on paper.
The Locker
The papers you go hunting for once a year, encrypted on your phone and easy to find.
Plans and headcounts, the bill and the settling, lifts, polls, lists and the Locker.
What we decided not to build.
All of them were easy to build. Each was refused, and the reason is written down.
Our rule for the whole app: said, never sensed. What your family knows about you is what you chose to tell them, never what your phone noticed.
Recovery is a human check, held for a day, visible to everyone who could object.
Lose the phone, keep the family.
With no number to re-prove, what brings your account back is a key you keep at home and two people who love you.
A guardian never sees your messages. Not one, not ever.
We write down how these frauds actually work.
How each one works, the moment it stops, and what to do tonight.
Open the scam filesThe digital arrest
A police officer on video calls you, tells you a parcel in your name held drugs, and keeps you on the line until the money moves.
Attack fileHi Mum, this is my new number
The oldest trick on the newest rails, and the one that works best on a parent whose child lives abroad.
The quietest phone in the house.
KnownSquare is being built now, for Android and iPhone. The app will be free for families.
Coming soon